00:03More than two years of development and The Sinking City is slowly approaching its release.
00:08There is still a lot of work lying ahead, but the hardest part is certainly behind us.
00:12Now we feel it's finally time to start showing some gameplay to the public.
00:16Luckily, we have a few great opportunities to do it, with gaming events like GDC and EGX Rest being right
00:22around the corner.
00:30Making a demo is always a challenge, we know that by now. Our goal is to show as much diversity
00:35as possible, diversity of our gameplay features and cultural aspects as well.
00:39For these purposes, and also to introduce and explain our mechanics, we are creating a completely new questline.
00:46So let's jump back to November, when our work began. Our narration team comes up with a story of a
00:51missing person.
00:58It ties together our gameplay features, as well as that Lovecraftian lore.
01:02At the same time, our concept artists and level modelers start working on the gameplay area.
01:07The quest is designed to take the player across different city districts, rich, poor, the harbor zone and the others.
01:14At first, the plan was to put together a small separate map just for GDC, but we quickly realized we
01:19didn't want to make something we would never use in the future.
01:24So we agree that the quest should take place in the actual city. The problem is, our full map is
01:29far from finished.
01:30It already has streets and buildings, but is lacking those small details that make a city feel alive.
01:36To negate that, we decide to border off the gameplay area and spice it up a little, add points of
01:41interest, vehicles, landmarks and of course our monoliths.
01:44So now we have a more or less finished and polished part of the map that we can use in
01:48our final product.
01:50Things are going smoothly. Obviously, different bugs and glitches keep popping up like crazy.
01:55Sometimes the hero wears two hats, sometimes our floating objects stop being floaty and don't get me started on strange
02:02collisions.
02:03But we always manage to fix them in no time. However, there is one big problem that we have struggled
02:08to sort out for months. Lighting.
02:11In our previous demo we used static light maps and baked them into the textures. That was a difficult and
02:17resource draining process, so in our game we eventually decided to switch to dynamic lighting.
02:22It works great, yet we still cannot pinpoint the right tone and colors that we want to use in the
02:27sinking city.
02:29To solve that problem we reach out to professional photo artists in Kyiv.
02:33They help our team find the right color scheme, inspired by the works of Caspar David Friedrich, James McNeil Whistler,
02:39Gregory Crudson and other prominent masters in their fields.
02:43Also, during our numerous play tests we realized something. Our quest line is intriguing, but very linear. And that's not
02:50something you'd expect from the developers that keep hyping up their quote-unquote strong and non-linear storytelling.
02:55So our writers put together an alternative ending, I guess you could call it a good ending, available only for
03:01the most observant investigators.
03:04There is something else that requires a lot of effort to produce. Our intro cutscene is supposed to be the
03:10very first thing that people will see. Obviously we want to make it look impressive and true to our source
03:15of inspiration Lovecraft.
03:17Our cinematic artists decide to start a cutscene in the water, slowly emerging to show the city. The sea and
03:23its destructive influence are one of the main themes in our game, and these first few seconds felt fitting, they
03:29felt right.
03:32There is a whole lot of work being done in the meantime. Our animation specialists are working on making those
03:38characters and objects move realistically, the localization team is searching for the right actors to voice our characters, the sound
03:44designers and the combat unit are busy as well. After several months of work, the demo is ready. All that's
03:50left to do is spend countless and countless hours creating and practicing the presentation.
03:57We know the importance of the first impressions. They can be make it or break it kind of deal. We
04:02might find thousands of new fans or go completely unnoticed. And it's really tempting to fall in the trap of
04:07our promise just to gain short-term attention.
04:10But there is nothing worse than being disappointed when the game comes out and feel like being lied to. So
04:16we decided to make a demo that is true to the game as possible. And now we want to see
04:20what will be the people's reaction.
04:21We want to see what will be the people's reaction.
04:38We want to see what will be the people's reaction.
04:46Grazie a tutti.
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